Selects: Carl Sagan: American Hero

stint of Knell? Right, yeah, oh, you mean the wording? Yeah, fine, all right, how you doing? I'm fine, just like that wording I'm sleepy. Why about I've just been staying up late writing until one and two in the morning, like a dope, like a seventeen Oh yeah, yeah, a manifesto. No, No, just staying up too late typing. That's neat. Do you drink wine while you type? Last night? It was bullet bourbon? Yeah, And then you're just like, I'm not typing words correctly anymore.

And then it's time for bed. You get on a roll and then you look up and it's to two am. Nice man, I'm glad to hear that six thirty rolls around and here we are. That's awesome. Yeah, that's great. So you're creative juices are flowing. They're flowing. Baby. Do you know who else is juices were flowing and still flow through this universe? Carl Sagan, he was. He was a creative science type. Yeah, and it made him kind

of controversial, man. It also made him beloved, beloved, and uh, I think one of like the precursors to what we do you know? In fact, he there's a quote on him being an explainer, which I thought was very cool, which is the geekiest remember, but it's a pretty it's a good term. Yeah, he said. I think I'm able to explain things because understanding wasn't entirely easy for me. Some things that the most brilliant students were able to

see instantly, I had to work to understand. I can remember what I had to do to figure it out. The very brilliant ones figure it out so fast that sounds familiar. They never see the mechanics of understanding. So I really identified with that, and like, man, that's kind of what we do, you know? We worked really hard to understanding this because we're not experts, and he wasn't an expert on one thing. He covered a lot of That's what made him unique, a lot of different facets

of science. Yeah, which you don't see much. No you don't. I mean it does pop up here and there. But if you if you think about the people who are like that, like Jared Diamond is a really good current example Neil type. No, that's Dustin Diamond, Okay, Jared Diamond. Uh man. I don't even remember what he's trained in. He's just such a generalist. But he wrote like guns, germs and steel. Um, he's got a little a little

Robert bork Beard, good guy. Um, he's one. Neil deGrasse Tyson has definitely become one, although he's still very much an astrophysician, right, yeah, but he's he's sort of talked about a lot of times in terms of being like Sagan, and not just because he rebooted Cosmos, which was Sagan's show, but um, oh yeah, he's just the face of science,

like he's the go to guy. Sure. I mean, like he was the obvious choice for Cosmos because he was already so much like Sagan following in those footsteps for sure. Those other guys like Brian Green as a science explainer, Bill Nye as a science explainer, Um, they're definitely out

there for sure. But you can you make a good point that Sagan was one of the originals, if not the original, but the idea that he was somebody who was willing to draw parallels from different disciplines in science or bring him together to create, um, something approachable for people, to kind of invigorate people's love of science. I think it's amazing. Yeah, it made him beloved. It also just made him not reviled. This is not the right word,

but he was definitely criticized in the scientific establishment. Uh in parts for sure. Some people in the scientific establishment loved him, and some were like, uh, you're not doing much real research, you know, you're just sort of a face guy. And um, I poo poo that entirely and say that he did a lot for science and people like him are are necessary, and uh, I value their work. Okay, you're taking a stand. Huh. Yeah, man, Carl Sagan is amazing. He's one of my heroes. Yeah, he's like I watched

Cosmos when I was ten years old. I've never seen it. Man, it was great. I mean it was a PBS show that had tens of millions of viewers. I know, millions and millions. Yeah, so that's your saken. Yeah. And you know what he he told Johnny Carson, he never said billions and billions. Uh, he said billions upon billions, right, I never heard it. There's a super cut on YouTube of all of his billions, millions and trillions from Dots Moats cut to uh with it like hip hop music

bed and um, is that a glorious down? I don't remember the name of it. There's one. There's a video a song that somebody created with him, a super cut of him. It's called Glorious Toll. That's pretty great. Well, I never heard billions and billions in there. There's a lot of billions and millions and trillions. He loved those words, but um, he said, I never specifically said to billions and billions, and I couldn't. I didn't hear it either,

So he's a misunderstood genius. Yeah. Became I think Carson did at first, or maybe it was Saturday out Live, and then that just became the thing. Billions and billions because he is a weird little dude for sure, and a lot of what's easily parody, but he also seemed to have a really good sense of humor about himself at least and in general. He smoked grass. He thought grass was far out. Man. We just vaulted back in time with that one. Yeah, he smoked the marijuana grass

making a contemporary. He was on the pot, Yeah, he did. He liked to smoke weed and um. In fact, I have a quote here from he wrote an essay. The quote reads, and woe. Best Pavement album by the way. He wrote an essay. I don't know about that. Oh yeah, what's your favorite? Um, I've played it in enchanted. Yeah, the first one. It's hard, although Crooked Ray and Crooked Rain was pretty good. No, I've never seen him more

interested in what we're talking about. It's funny. In college, we used to have a saying, it's not a matter of which album are we gonna listen to next? It's which Pavement album are we gonna listen to next? Just put down T shirt? Yeah. So anyway, Sagan wrote an essay and Marijuana reconsidered, um, and here is one of his quotes. He said, the cannabis experienced has greatly improved my appreciation for art, subject which I had never much

appreciated before. The understanding of the intent of the artist, which I can achieve when high, sometimes carries over to when I'm down. This is one of many human frontiers which cannabis has helped me traverse. Was that Kermit the Frog doing Carl Sagan Let's sort of kermity but he uh yeah, I mean that's not it doesn't define him or anything, but yeah, he liked to smoke the pot and he liked to get out his little tape recorder and talk about stuff. But on the turnal neck, yeah,

with nothing else. It was the sixties and seventies, of course he was, and I think the eighties and maybe even into the nineties, that's true. So um, let's let's I guess, let's go back to the beginning. We've done some pretty good teasing here, right, And when you're talking about a human being, there's no place better to start at the beginning than with their earth Brooklyn, New York. His mother was Rachel, was a garment industry manager and

apparently oh yeah, yeah, but his mom was overbearing. Yes, mom was overbearing. Sorry, dad was a Ukrainian immigrant Samuel who worked as a garment industry manager. Because in ninety four they prebad and hire women to do chops like that, which is really stinky. So uh and we it's not like we've met the lady or anything and can report

that she's overbearing. The idea that she's overbearing comes from this long standing image of her of she had very high hopes and high expectations and aspirations for Carl very well may have made the man. Yeah, you know, moved to New Jersey after a little while and was voted the class brain at Rahway High School. And I thought this is interesting in this what article is this the New Yorker, which one while why Carl Sagan's truly replaceable

Smiths and Enjoel Achenbach. Uh. It was a great article though, But they tracked down in nineteen fifty three a questionnaire from high school that he had to fill out on his own character traits, and Sagan said he gave himself low marks for vigorousness like with sports, an average rating for emotional stability, and the highest ratings for being dominant and reflective. I'm gonna start using that vigorousness. Yeah, and

I worked out this morning. I'm so vigorous. Um. So that's not just a piece of paper they dug up, chuck. That's from his archives, which were actually sold to the Library of Congress by his widow. Um what is his widow's name, Anne andrew In one of his uh well, his his widow, but he was married three times, um and uh ann sold the papers. Are supplied the papers for an honorarium, I guess, to the Library of Congress.

And the Library of Congress got that money from Seth McFarlane had basically Seth McFarland bought Carl Sagan's papers and donated them to the Library of Congress. Yes, that's why it's pretty cool. That's why it's called the Seth McFarland Collection of the Carl Sagan and and Drury and Archive. I had to put his name on there. Well, I mean, sure,

why not? You know, no, it's fine. He's he's he's a huge fan of his work, and he's the one who rebooted Cosmos right and genuinely, like I mean, I gotta say, like whatever you have to say about Seth McFarland. And there's plenty to say about Seth McFarland. He is he proved himself a true fan of Carl Sagan and a rich guy to fan. I've always liked a family guy, so I don't have anything bad to say about him. Uh, what have you seen American dad? No, I never got

into that. Actually, OK, yeah, it's not family guy. It's definitely just totally different. Gotch uh seven hundred and ninety eight boxes of stuff of archival material. Um. The guy love to log every conversation he ever had, and he thought that ever entered his brain mainly through the cassette tape. But um, I guess that was transcribed by other folks. Yeah, apparently that's um. Joel achenbach Um says that his his writing style was so conversational because he didn't write, He

dictated into a dictaphone and then it was transcribed. Basically, basically, it was like the Hunter S. Thompson of science. Yeah. Remember Hunter t had like the real real he'd wear around his neck when one is high on marijuana. It is a buzz kill to type. Actually, that's funny. We bring up Hunter Thompson. Hunter Thompson loved acid. You know who else loved acid? Timothy Leary. You know who hung

out with Timothy Leary, Carl Sagan. Timothy Leary was trying to get Sagan to advise him on how to build a an interstellar arc because Leary just totally lost his stuff by this time. Right, we should do a show on him. Oh yeah, I'm surprised. We haven't to be crazy. Um, let's do it, man, Yeah, we should. We should do one on like the Mary pranks. There's a whole thing just basically redo the electric kool Aid asset test totally.

It would be a good episode. But Leary um at a mental institution because he'd been popped with a bunch of acid I think, had a visitor in Carl Sagan and Frank Drake of the famous Drake equation, and they came by to say hi, and and Leary was like, seriously, you guys have to help me design this. And they were like this, the closest star is too far away. You're kuk, this isn't gonna work. And Learry said he since that they had some sort of neural blockage. That's

why they couldn't think like he could. Man. So that was Carl Sagan Timothy Larry story but I think they stayed in touch. Oh, I'm sure they did so. Uh, young Sagan is his life kind of changes when he goes to the World's Fair in nineteen thirty nine. He was just five years old. You remember whose World's Fair that was? Was that? No? Was it Chicago? Eddie bernays, Oh, yeah, that was the one. Wow, the one that changed everything,

including Carl Sagan. Boy, that's a big one. Um. So Sagan goes to the World Fair and it was sort of a a great time, um, to be a young kid interested in science, because in the late thirties and forties and fifties, it was like everyone was captivated by the future. Right, there's this idea that science could do anything, Yeah, anything and very soon would. It was really exciting and um, it was just a great time to be to be into it. It's the uh what's his name Openheimer? No, Oppenheimer.

Now I'm talking about the article back like, yeah Oppenheimer, this guy. Yeah, I'm the I'm become death. That's what I thought you were talking about. Uh. In the article, he makes a great point about, um, just that that time period and um, how exploratory everything was really from then,

like through the nineteen seventies. That was a great, like forty year period in science where basically that was funding and like anything is possible, we can do anything we want, until they started to you know, I guess disprove things

here and there, right. And actually what's interesting is there's a corresponding boost in technology from that era too, And a lot of people point out that all of this stuff from about nineteen seventy five on is actually built on the backs of the stuff that was built in the forty years before that, from about nineteen thirty five to nineteen seventy five and ever since then, we've had

a technological plateau. It's really interesting, and you don't think about You're like, well, no, I mean we have iPhones now. It's like, yeah, iPhones are all they're a combination of different stuff that was first discovered or invented forty or more years ago. Um, And basically everything's like that. We were in a slump right now. So it was not only a time where they thought science could do anything. Science was doing just about anything. And we've since hit

a plateau and um, he the author described him. I thought it was a great description. Sagan as a nuanced referee Because really cool thing about Sagan was he was very grounded and science and proof and facts. But he wasn't um. He wasn't just a square and a skeptic, although he was a skeptic, yeah, but he was also like he wanted to to find life on other planets. And he didn't shut things down. He was all about the discussion of everything as long as you still did

the research. And we're grounded in facts as a matter of fact. And he did not believe in UFOs. He did not think that UFOs were extraterrestrial spacecraft. But in nineteen sixty nine he mounted a conference on UFOs in which everyone apparently had their say all sides. Yeah, it wasn't like we're mounting a conference on UFOs. You can come so the rest of us can poo poo your ideas and beliefs. It was come and share your your position on it. That's enormous, and that in and of

itself is worth remembering the person for. But this is nineteen sixty nine, before you'd even become like a household name or anything like it. Yeah, and I like to think we do that and we still get emails. So we got one today for people that said it's it's dangerous to even mention other schools of thought. That's dogmatic. Yeah, And I just I don't agree with dogmatic and close minded and don't even bring don't even email us with that crap. Yeah, I just don't don't even bother because

we're gonna we're gonna make fun of you on the air. Yeah, because that's not what our shows about. Even if we don't believe something, we like to throw all sides out there because I think, uh, discussion is healthy no matter what. That's just me. Even when we were mocking crop circles, we still like talked about crop circles, did we not. It's not like we just pretended like there wasn't such a thing as crop circles. That's right, And we have Carl Sagan, thank for laying that golden path in front

of us. So you want to take a break, I don't want to, but we have we need to, Okay, all right, we'll be right back. Alright. So we've been beating around the bush here. Um, let's talk well not really, we've been getting into it, but let's let's talk about some of the things that Sagan uh he wasn't just some Johnny come lately. He had uh, degree upon degree.

I think he had billions and billions. We had undergrad degree, he had his masters, he had his PhD. He was he was well versed in a lot of realms of science, but his big thing was astronomy. Right. He had two degrees in undergrad and masters in physics and then a doctorate in astronomy um. And he did a little stint at Harvard. I didn't get tenure. So he's like, I'm out of here. And Cornell is like, you come to us and we will treat you like a god. And

they did. And he settled in at Cornell and set up his own lab, right, the Laboratory for Planetary for Planetary Studies. Uh, and he just that was when he really started to get going. He was doing side work for NASA at the time as well, doing consulting. He did that throughout his whole career, formulas, that kind of stuff. Sure, when NASA is picking your brain about like the Apollo mission, you're you're doing pretty well for yourself as a scientist.

But so he had this this this potential to to really go as sciency as he wanted to with this stuff, and he did in some ways in a lot of ways with his consulting with NASA, but he also kind of pushed NASA into humanities um direction as well, like the the Voyager discs, that's a that's a really great example of it. Like he talked NASA into including discs on Voyager one and two, the Golden Record, Yeah, that are They're basically like, here's some stuff that represents humanity

and Earth. Yeah, pretty much like if we ever do mind life on Earth, we need to have something to offer them to represent us. Yeah, yeah, what I say, life on Earth? Yeah, yeah, there's life on Earth. It's pretty much documented as fact, life out there, extraterrestrial life. He said, we needed to present ourselves and what Earth

is like and what humans are like. So he included a hundred and fifteen images representing the diversity of life and then uh sounds basically like his wife literally, this is pretty out there. I don't know if marijuana had anything to do with it. I think so. Yeah, his wife,

and she created her own sounds for the project. Basically, she meditated and then thought told the story of the universe by thinking it with her brain, and then those brain waves were translated into music, and she said, my mind also wandered to my love of my husband, so that was translated. So they blasted. That was her message that they blasted out to space, which is pretty far out right, but but awesome messages of love. Yure, man,

it's pretty neat. He wasn't afraid to show his tender side. No, no, no, he definitely wasn't. He was vulnerable in a lot of woics. Um. And also on those discs, there's I believe etchings of a man and a woman. I think it's etched on the disc and they're like laser disc size. They're super retro and made of gold, which is pretty cool. Um. And then there's a basically a depiction of where Earth is in the Milky Way, I believe, so it's basically

saying we're here if you ever find this. And then of course Voyager one, I believe, got lost and awakened and became sentient and then became a god on to some beings. Remember, and I think Star Trek one, the first the first movie. I never saw this veture. You never saw any of the Star Trek movies, dude, I've never seen one episode of the TV show. I've never seen one episode of the Next Generation. The only Star Trek thing I've ever ingested was Our Apologies to a Wheaten.

By the way, was that first movie that J. J. Abrams did. I saw that. I saw the second one of that. I also saw I think Star Trek maybe one, two, and three. And in one of those there's this god vjer who's like this artificial intelligence, and they finally meet Vijor and realized that the oi uh is blotted out and it's really Voyager one, the Space Probe. Wow. Yeah, that's pretty cool. I thought it was pretty neat too. I'm not a tricky by any means, but yeah, they

were still entertaining. I just never got into it. I was always a Star Wars guy, not that they're mutually exclusive, but I don't know, it just didn't grab me. You know, who would have predicted that we go off on a Star Trek Tangent and the Carl. Although I think I've told the story of working on a commercial with William Chatterer, you have, didn't he like bend you over a car and pretend to arrestue That was punch, Hey shot, it was t J. Hooker. Could have happened. Yeah, he was

though he was awesome. He'd loved being William Shatner. Oh yeah, man, you can tell like guy wears it like a suit. Yeah he was. He was awesome, very nice guy. So, um, we're getting off track again here, Sagan with science. There was actual science to stuff. As a matter of fact, the idea of the greenhouse effect is rooted partially in his work. Yeah, I mean that that had been around

since the late nineteenth century. But um, he looked at like a planet like Venus and said, you know what, Venus is really hot, and I think wise because this greenhouse effect. And um, then because of that work, people started thinking, well, maybe Earth has a greenhouse effect. Going on to right really opened the door for that line of thought. It did, and he's correct. Earth definitely does

have a greenhouse effect and it's problematic. Correct. Another one that he's widely cited for is the Fate Young Young Son paradox. Um. I don't know if the if he was the one who first pointed this out, or if he just kind of built upon it and it's still not fully solved. I think so he and George Mullen figured this out. I'm pretty sure Yeah. So the idea is that Earth early on its history was a ball of ice. But problematically, there was also some liquid water

on Earth too, It wasn't all ice. This doesn't make much sense because the Sun as it stands now is just about enough to keep Earth from from being a frozen ball of ice. But back then, when Earth was mostly a frozen ball of ice, the Sun was only at like s of its luminosity or lumosity, luminosity one of those luminosity right, yeah, sure, um that it is today, and so it doesn't make sense that there should be any liquid water on Earth. And it's called the faint

Young Sun paradox. And um, I believe they figured out or they Sagan and Mullin said, well, it's the greenhouse effect. Yeah, and I don't think they ever fully settled on that. Um. Still, it's it's outstanding. Yeah. They think it might be a combination of that and some other stuff. That's right. Uh, what else did you do? He looked at um Titan, Saturn's moon at one point and said, you know what, I think there's organic molecules up there and that's why

it looks red. And he was right. Yeah. He went to h Yeah. So, I mean he he wasn't afraid to throw a wacky hypothesis out there, and that did not do him any favors in the scientific community either. No, because there is a definite um arrogance associated with throwing out the hypothesis and not doing the work, leaving it to other people to do the work, and then you

still get the credit for throwing the hypothesis out there. Um. It's it's one of the it's one of the main reasons why Sagan was highly criticized by some people in the scientific community. Yeah, there's um in the Smithsonian article. Um, they say there's sort of an unwritten rule among scientists. Uh, they'll shout that speculate, that'll shout talk about things outside your immediate area of expertise. It's a big one that

he transgressed. Yeah. He was all over the place, uh and now shouting that horse around on late night TV talk shows. Yeah with Carson. Yeah, he was on Carson two dozen times over a couple of decades and was, like I said, sort of the Neil de grasse Tyson. He was the go to when anyone in the press needed anything for television. He was the guy and anything that had anything even remotely to do with science, even if I had to do with theology, and somebody wanted

a sciences opinion of theology, go to Carl Sagan. Yeah, And so from Sagan's at his point of view, he's just furthering science. What's the problem From this other scientists point of view, It's like it makes it look like Carl Sagan is trained in everything from astrophysics, which he was, to theology and biology and anthropology and every ology in between, and he wasn't. True. There's some professional jealousy too, you know.

I think, um, you know how it is like he's getting all the press, and uh, other folks are stuck in a lab doing what they think is the real work. So I kind of get it in a way. But I just think that people like Bill Nye and Tyson and and Sagan are hugely necessary. You know, you gotta have a face out there furthering it. You definitely need, you know, yea, and you gotta have a media outlet like Parade magazine to put that face one that was his go to for sure? Was he in there a lot?

Oh yeah, it was. That's the Sunday insert right, Yeah, and that was like kind of the big joke because that he stopped publishing in academic journals and started publishing and Parade Magazine. And if you remember in our Nuclear Winter episode, yeah he was. Did he completely in uh

think of that? No, he just furthered it. He was part of a group that that was organized that basically said, like, if you guys start setting off nuclear bombs, it's not going to be this thing that just it's like, there's going to be this thing called Nuclear Winner. And they hadn't done all the science yet before he went and wrote an article in Parade Magazine and told the world about Nuclear Winner, and in the opinion of the science that's he was working with, like really undermine their case

because it's sensationalized it. Yeah, but what it also did was it got your your average Joe thinking about nuclear war in the Cold War and maybe we shouldn't be zooming toward our own demise right at a hundred miles. And that's the big back and forth about Sagan's legacy, Yeah, or the the actual work he did too. Yeah, and you mentioned that theology. He was famously um spiritual agnostic. He was a spiritual agnostic, is how he defined himself. Yeah,

he didn't classify until as atheist. No, and the reason why, true to Sagan's own um own way, was that he could not scientifically prove that there was not God. So he said, how can I call myself an atheist? Which is um, it's pretty cool. And actually he's the guy supposedly that coined the term extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. That's what I here? Does that go back to him? So he's like, skeptics love the dude. Oh yeah, he's the father of the skeptic. But I think he I

don't know. I think he gives skeptics the good name. Sure, but if you want to prove your bones to how hardcore skeptic you are, criticize Carl Sagan in the skeptic community, you can really show that you're a super skeptic. Yeah. Sagan was a milk toast as far as skeptics go. Yeah, because he would indulge other lines of thought, um, but still require proof. But he wouldn't just shut it down right out of the gate. So we will get back to Carl Sagan right after these messages. All right, chuckers,

we're back. So, um, there was one thing that Carl saying he would poke funded himself. He never abandoned. It was this idea that possibly, maybe, just maybe, um, there was intelligent life out there, and um, he wanted there to be for sure, you know. Uh, he helped disprove or set the conditions against life being out there for sure.

Like for example, um, he suggested that on Mars, the shifting features of Mars were a result of dust storms, and it turned out he was right, But those dust storms also basically said there's probably not life on Mars just from that reason alone, those horrible dust storms, right yeah, and he um, actually he want to pull a surprise for some of his work. I think he wrote more

than dozen books. But one of the things he wrote was Contact, the novel not uh you know, he was totally into sci fi and wrote you know, the movie uh Contact McConaughey and Jodie Foster that was based on his novel. And of course that movie was about sending signals into outer space trying to find life. So you could tell the guy it was something he loved to

talk about and write about. Oh yeah, but he also loved it like actually that that kind of research, which is totally up his Alley like st um, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence is is evidence based in science based search for extraterrestrials? Right, Yes, that was that's Carl Sagan through and through. That's just totally him. He was, um, he wanted to believe in extraterrestrial life, but he needed

proof to believe in it. Really. Yeah, he just couldn't make that jump to just saying yes, they they exist without any proof. Yeah, exactly. So he's writing books, he NASA is picking his brain, he's all over the place and he eventually We've talked about his TV show debuted on UM well, actually the debuted nineteen eighty one. Yeah, I thought eight. Yeah, yeah, I think it was, um so I must have been nine years old. I was four. I thought it was ten. What month was it, I

don't know. I don't even um. But he originally it was the TV series is going to be called Man and the Cosmos. But he thought that was sexist and he was a feminist, so he said, um, he proposed a couple of more titles. One was called There Terrible t H E R E uh with some subtitle, and then the other was Cosmos along with a subtitle. Um, and he spent like three years around the world filming this thing, right, Yeah, and it just it was a what it's not like it ran for seasons and seasons.

It was like a a single run of shows on PBS that televis an event. Yeah, it was a TV event exactly. One of the other things that he did, which I never knew, was he wrote along with his son. Now because his son uh has a byeline, I guess Jimmy Sagan Todd Sagan his five kids I think total, but one of his sons became a sci fi writer, another one became more of a science writer. So basically he split into two. Yeah. Actually I never thought about

that way. Um, I just explained two of his kids existence. He wrote the entry for Life for Encyclopedia Britannica, like this is what life is. Yeah. He was fairly energetic dude, for sure. Yeah, to say the least. I mean he did Cosmos in his mid forties, just out of nowhere, a lot accomplished for a pot head, he really did, you know, He's like the Cypress Hill of of science. I don't know, hey, man, they put out like three albums in like four or five years. Yeah, it's a

lot of work and then retired. Yeah, secand did not retire, No, he did not, sir. He worked up until his death in n Yeah. He dies after battling UM, a bone marrow disease for about a year or so to two years, I think is closer. Um, he's diagnosed with it and he needed a transplant, and his sister uh stepped up and volunteered to give him a donation and did and uh apparently it wasn't quite enough because he died of an infection after about a year and a half after

um the transplant. Just sixty four years old. Yeah, too, way, way too young, it really is. And in fact, yesterday, the day we're recording this is November ten. I believe yesterday was would have been his eighty first birthday. Oh yeah, you didn't plan that, nope. Wow, that's a pretty impressive speaking to me from billions of light years away. Yeah, that's funny that you say that. Because somebody wrote to him, Um, they said, how do you know that there's not a heaven?

And um, he had this really great response. He remember in his archives, he was a pack rat, so he kept a lot of correspondence and from it they found Um. In this achembach Um article, there's a a citation of a letter that he wrote to somebody, and UM, he says, thanks for your letter, nothing like the Christian notion of heaven has been found out to about ten billion light years, and then in parentheses he puts one light year is

almost six trillion miles. Best wishes. And the point is like he took the time to write the letter back to this guy, like he would engage rather than just ignore the letter entirely. So he entertained and indulged people's ideas enough that he would engage with somebody he didn't even know about whether there's heaven or not. And this this was sent um the year he died. Actually, so

he's writing this from his sick bed. Wow, that's awesome. Uh. As far as whether or not it bothered him, whether or not he was how he was thought of in the scientific community, UM, it kind of all came to a head in Uh, he was on a list to be included um as a nominee for the National Academy of Sciences. Uh. In the end he was not included, and it bothered him. Um. He kind of brushed it off to two people in public saying that, you know, I didn't think I would get in any way, but

his widow said, uh, quote, it was painful. It seemed like a unsolicited slight end quote. And they ended up giving him an honorary medal, which was nice, but that was definitely a big sting for him. Yeah. The National Academy of Sciences said, nope, you're not a member. Yeah, you're not one of us. They basically said that the the actual research that you did wasn't strong enough, which, uh, it stinks. It sounds like a definite calculated slight Yeah. Yeah, yeah,

he's included in my book. Yeah for sure. Man. Uh so my hat is off to you, sir forever. Do you got anything else? No, man, I just uh that someone needs to make a great documentary or movie about the guy. Yeah, you know, starring Ashton Kutcher is Carl Sagan. That guy can play anybody. Yeah. Uh. If you want to know more about Carl Sagan, you can start with this delightful little article on how stuff works by typing Carl Sagan in the search bar. And since I said

search bar, its time for listener mail. Hey guys, my name is Connie. I've been a listener for a couple of months after my brother turned me onto the show. Since then, I've been completely obsessed and haven't been able to stop listening. UM on track to become a nurse, so I can can't get enough of anything science or biology related. I want to thank you for a couple of things. UM in a base level anatomy class right now and the rigor Mortist podcast saved my behind and

my grade on my cadaver dissection and muscle's desk. A lot of the things you covered, like the nature of the muscle's relationship with a TP and the integral proteins really helped me pass my exam and not pass out in the cadaver lab. You also even taught my anatomy professor something new about keila cells. How about that last year I was diagnosed with anxiety and depression due to the fact that I could never really fit in the

right way. I lost almost all of my friends when I made an early jump from high school to college, and being able to count on YouTube weekly has really helped a little bit with the loneliness and learning something new is always a healthy distraction from anxiety. So you guys, really give me something new and exciting to discuss and learned about twice a week when you work forty hours, it really goes a long way. Uh. It would absolutely make his ear if you could give a shout out

to my brother, Matt the physics teacher. That is very nice. Yeah, he's the reason I started listening to you and sharing. The love of knowledge is really something that has kept us close in spite of our eleven year age difference. It sparked so many interesting and inspired conversations between us. So thank you for what you're doing and helping many of us make it through tough spots. That is much love from Connie from Illinois. So thank you, Connie, and

hello to Matt your brother. Hey, Matt the physics teacher. Yeah, thanks guys. It's we love families that listen and bringing people together. Man, it's makes us feel good. Yeah. The family that listens to s Y s K together stays together. That's right. It's a dire warning. Uh. If you want to let us know how great somebody in your life is because they introduced you to the stuff, you should know we love hearing that stuff. You can tweet to

us at s Y s K podcast. You can join us on Facebook dot com slash stuff you Should Know. You can send us an email to Stuff podcast at how stuff Works dot com and has always joined us at our home on the web. Stuff you Should Know dot Com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts my Heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.